Atriplex coulteri
Atriplex hortensis
Coulter's orach, Coulter's orache, Coulter's saltbush
French spinach, garden orach, garden orache, orache
frequently tinged with red, much branched, sparsely scurfy.
erect, mostly branched.
many, sessile or short petiolate;
blade obovate, oblong, oblanceolate, or elliptic, (5–)7–20 × 1–3(–5) mm, base cuneate, margin entire, apex acute.
mostly opposite or mostly alternate;
petiole 0.3–4+ cm;
blade green on both sides, ovate or ovate-lanceolate to cordate-hastate at base, 15–180 × 8–135 mm, margin entire or more rarely irregularly toothed or lobed, apex attenuate to acuminate or rounded.
of spikes disposed in leafless panicles.
in glomerules in distal axils and short terminal spikes.
5-merous.
in small axillary clusters.
dimorphic, some ebracteolate and with 5-parted perianth, others without perianth enclosed by a pair of sessile or very shortly stipitate bracteoles.
brown, 1.3–1.5 mm.
of ebracteate flowers black, horizontal, convex, 1–2 mm wide, lustrous;
those of bracteolate flowers olivaceous brown, vertical, flat, 3–4.5 mm wide, dull.
bracteoles sessile or subsessile, broadly obovate, 2–3 mm and as broad or about as broad, united 1/2 of length, margin free, deeply and sharply dentate, narrowed at summit, faces smooth or sometimes tuberculate.
bracteoles samaralike, orbicular to oval or ovate, compressed, 5–18 mm, united only at base, entire, faces smooth.
= 18.
Atriplex coulteri
Atriplex hortensis
Of conservation concern.
Atriplex coulteri is closely allied to the geographically disjunct A. fruticulosa, from which it is said to differ in the compressed, small (2.5–3 mm) versus thickened and larger (3–5 mm) bracts. Specimens of A. fruticulosa, including the type, examined by me have bracteoles compressed-thickened, but hardly “globoid” as stated in the key to the species by H. M. Hall and F. E. Clements (1923). Additional specimens borrowed from California might clarify the situation; otherwise the two species are sufficiently close as to be treated as a single entity.
(Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.)
Atriplex hortensis has been widely grown as a potherb, has escaped from cultivation, and is now established especially in moist ruderal sites. It is easily distinguished by its rounded, samaralike, entire, and smooth fruiting bracteoles, and the presence of two kinds of pistillate flowers, the one enclosed by bracteoles and lacking sepals, the other without bracteoles but subtended by sepals.
Atriplex nitens (see list of excluded taxa) is distinguished from A. hortensis in Flora Europea (P. Aellen 1964b) by having leaf blades densely white scurfy beneath, the distal surface lustrous, as opposed to green and dull for A. hortensis. Occasional specimens, treated here as A. hortensis, have leaves somewhat scurfy.
(Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.)
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